airway, and found on the piazza
forty horsemen waiting for them: by them they were calmly escorted from
the city by the Porta Portesa. Alfonso was found at the point of death,
but not actually dead, by some passers-by, some of whom recognised him,
and instantly conveyed the news of his assassination to the Vatican,
while the others, lifting the wounded man in their arms, carried him to
his quarters in the Torre Nuova. The pope and Caesar, who learned this
news just as they were sitting down to table, showed great distress, and
leaving their companions, at once went to see Alfonso, to be quite
certain whether his wounds were fatal or not; and an the next morning, to
divert any suspicion that might be turned towards themselves, they
arrested Alfonso's maternal uncle, Francesco Gazella, who had come to
Rome in his nephew's company. Gazella was found guilty on the evidence
of false witnesses, and was consequently beheaded.

But they had only accomplished half of what they wanted. By some means,
fair or foul, suspicion had been sufficiently diverted from the true
assassins; but Alfonso was not dead, and, thanks to the strength of his
constitution and the skill of his doctors, who had taken the lamentations
of the pope and Caesar quite seriously, and thought to please them by
curing Alexander's son-in-law, the wounded man was making progress
towards convalescence: news arrived at the same time that Lucrezia had
heard of her husband's accident, and was starting to come and nurse him
herself. There was no time to lose, and Caesar summoned Michelotto.

"The same night," says Burcardus, "Don Alfonso, who would not die of his
wounds, was found strangled in his bed."

The funeral took place the next day with a ceremony not unbecoming in
itself, though, unsuited to his high rank. Dan Francesca Bargia,
Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St. Peter's, where the
body was buried in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.

Lucrezia arrived the same evening: she knew her father and brother too
well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after
Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the
surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she
knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded. In fear,
therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she felt this time too well
might alienate the confidence of her father and brother, she retired to
Nepi